There are diverse three-dimensional products that are manufactured using two-dimensional cutting machines. Such products have a constant cross-section and are laterally invariant. FIG. 1 illustrates three examples of such 3D shapes. The direction which the cutting wire is applied is illustrated by an arrow.
The most common material for such products is foam. It is typically cut by wire cutters. Such foam products are prevalent in numerous everyday items. These include, for instance, household upholstery (chairs, sofas and mattresses), padded seats in vehicles, children's toys, and a plurality of domestic items.
In the final stages in production of foam, the liquid foam is poured into large rectangular molds, where it rises, then is allowed to polymerize and harden. The resultant large rectangular foam block, termed a “bun”, which may have dimensions of 1×2×10 meters. The bun needs to be cut into many three-dimensional pieces of various thicknesses and shapes, to suit the size and shape of the end products, with as little waste of material as possible.
Challenges exits in optimizing the workflow in a production floor. It is necessary to design an optimal nest in which the varied shapes are arranged prior to cutting, with minimal surplus material. However, this does not override the need to optimize the time utilization of various additional machinery used on the production floor, and of the workforce available.
An additional complication in the decision making process related to the optimization of the assembly line, is the various due dates for assorted orders. For instance, while it may be advantageous to wait and combine more than one order into a single nest, thus saving material, one project may have a more urgent deadline than another. In another example, if all upper part of a single type of sofa are produced in one nest, then only several days later are all the lower parts are produced, the workforce may remain idle in the interim, as they are unable to begin assembling even a single sofa until all upper and lower parts are cut. If more than one job is mixed into a single nest, the workforce will need to spend time separating the items into correct batches each related to a single project, which may be time consuming and therefore more costly in labor costs than the savings in material.
In an example of optimization of the production floor, while utilization of material may suggest designing the nest by inserting a large number of small parts around the edges of larger pieces in the nest, the end result may be a surplus of these smaller parts if they are only needed for the present job in a relatively small quantity. The decision making process must weigh whether the storage costs for these smaller units outweigh the benefit of savings in material.
Cutting large blocks of standard unused raw material may be faster, as the cutting machine needs to be loaded only once. However, discarding remnants adds to overall waste. Certain odd shaped remnants may not be further cut by the machines available, and this must also be included in the workflow decision process.
In past, the workflow in a production floor for cutting and assembling three-dimensional products, was ordered intuitively by the floor manager, who would briefly consider due dates, two-dimensional nest design, machinery and workforce, then make a quick decision based on his experience, as to the order of production on the floor. This method may or may not have been cost effective, depending on the skill of the floor manager.
While over the course of years many different software products were created to design two-dimensional nests having the least waste of material, there is no software to date which takes into consideration any other parameters of the production floor, such as the due dates of various projects, availability of the workforce, length of time for running various machines, and formation of only those remnants shaped to allow further processing in the production floor. Additional parameters which have not to date been given sufficient attention are the real three-dimensional yield, obtaining optimal sizes of 3D blocks, and various additional manufacturing processes involved before a final product is produced (such as slicing or gluing smaller parts).
Prior art software solutions which could be applied to solve the problems described above include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software which aims to track the business processes. Most ERP software primarily tracks inventory, jobs ordered and billing, but is not designed to make production floor decisions that would improve the yield or best utilize the production floor. ERP software lacks engineering information, such as geometric data, and data on relevant machinery characteristics. ERP is not designed to perform manufacturing tasks and therefore cannot aid in performing efficient production floor decisions.
While a customer may own business software, these typically monitor customer orders for complete products. There is little representation of the geometric shape of the individual pieces that comprise the product.
Additional prior art software products are engineering products for designing two or three-dimensional products, for example, CAD/CAM. CAD/CAM software rarely deals with specific customer orders. Rather, it includes diagrams of product parts including their geometric shape, the raw material from which they need to be cut, the characteristics of the machines on which they may be cut, and so on. No decision making options are available that would allow a user to best optimize the yield of a production floor. Nesting software is only available for positioning essentially two-dimensional nests and not for three-dimensional nests.
Prior art production decisions are disadvantageously sequential for each step in the production process. Raw material may be ordered in a specific quantity for a required arrival date, and while these parameters may be optimal for that specific step in the process, they are not necessarily optimal to ensure smooth flow with the remaining process steps. For instance, the storehouse may be full and unable to receive more raw material, even though a due date is looming and laborers are available to unload the material. While the best decision may be made for each step in the process, such sequential step-by-step decisions may not result in a smooth and efficient process. It is desirable to have a production planning software that can mathematically weigh the importance of each step in the entire process, and can provide an optimal smooth and efficient flow for a production plan, before any steps are taken to begin production.
Thus, there remained an unmet need for a higher level of production resource optimization by bridging the gap between software solutions from the Business category (e.g., ERP/MRP) and software solutions from the Engineering (e.g. CAD/CAM) category and their related processes and entities.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a software solution for optimizing workflow in a production floor which produces three-dimensional products. The software of the invention takes into consideration a wide range of parameters such as optimization of materials, availability of machinery, due dates, etc., and weighs the importance of these parameters before outputting a decision which includes one or more optimal nests and a production floor plan for optimizing work flow (machinery and workforce). Such a wide range of parameters have not previously been given consideration in any software of which the inventors are aware of for managing a production floor producing a three-dimensional product. These and other advantages will become more apparent in the Detailed Description herein below.